Yesterday, for the first day since Katrina, the city of Atlanta seemed to return to normal.

The traffic jams were back. The parking lots at the Tucker Wal-Mart (pictured) and Target were full. I even overheard customers chatting amiably about good things happening in their lives, and laughing.

But the New Normal is a mirage. It’s not real. It’s made possible by Governor Perdue’s short-term cancellation of the state’s gas tax, and by the Administration’s decision to go back to dirty gas and suspend EPA rules.

The gas tax is going back up, next week. And gas prices are headed higher, much higher.

Then it’s going to get cold and we’re really going to feel it. Prices for natural gas, which most of us use to heat our homes, will be up 70% over last year. I spent $5,000 last year adding insulation to my attic and I’ll still pay more for heat than I did. Folks who stretched their credit to buy bigger houses are going to be thinking of closing-off rooms. And others are going to pass the breaking point.

Even 9-11 faded a little with time. The building site became “Ground Zero,” a tourist attraction with flags and signs, and a viewing platform. The City of New York returned to normal, or near-normal, within a few weeks of the terror.

That won’t happen this time. The thousands of kids from New Orleans who’ve entered our schools this week will be there all year. Many of them will be here permanently.

In the days after the disaster many objected to the victims being termed “refugees.” (I avoided the term myself.) These are Americans, after all. Refugees are forced into other countries. But in many ways these victims are just as exiled as refugees. They are hundreds of miles (some thousands of miles) from where they want to be, from where their lives were just a few weeks ago. Most have no jobs, many have no skills, few have any friends. They’re doubled, tripled, quadrupled up all over towns, relying on the kindness of strangers, strangers who know that milk and houseguests come with expiration dates. Patience will wear thin. People will fight. Parents, friends, samaritans.

And it isn’t going away. New Orleans will take months to pump out, and months more to clean up. Then the homes have to be evaluated. Then most have to be rebuilt. Many won’t be able to wait that long, they’re going to get on with their lives in exile. Here, in exile.

Last year, in the wake of the election, I began a series of blog novels, the most recent being The American Diaspora. I imagined millions of frustrated American Democrats, pushed by events into exile far away.

It was a fantasy, because a real diaspora isn’t like that. In a real diaspora you get out with the clothes on your back. Maybe your family is split-up, maybe permanently. The skills and job you had are gone. The people sound funny, food tastes different, the climate is wrong. Whatever you had before, you have to build something new from scratch, and there’s no going back.

This is the New Orleans Diaspora. Do everything you can. These people need new lives. It’s going to be hard. They’re going to find themselves jealous of those around them who have – houses, cars, jobs, laughter. We have millions of people with PTSD on top of those coming home from Iraq.

In the New Normal we’ll all have to learn how to bend. We’ll all suffer. And it’s not going away.